Fun With A "Range Ninja"

NCFubar

NCFubar

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Took my kid and met some friends at the range after church for some fun and to sight in a new scope on the CZ I am trying to reach out with. I was boresighting it at the 25yd lanes while a "range ninja" was blasting away with his new tacticool AR. I fire a couple rounds to verify where I was, dialed it in a couple clicks and grabbed stuff to move over to the longer lanes. The ninja made a comment about getting a "real gun" and so on. I looked over to see his S&W MP-15 and green tip ammo and just smiled. He just has to make one more comment though so it was on. There was a very light breeze so I had to be a smart butt. I basically told him my kid (who really does shoot better than me) could shoot a better group at 100 yards with that little .22 rifle than he could with his AR and he fell for it.

Walking over I bet him $5 my kid's group of 5 would beat his but that was not enough he wanted $20 which I was happy to oblige. When we hit the 100 yard lane and waited for the range to go cold he just wouldn't shut up and our friends could hardly keep from busting out laughing. Anyway we finally put up the targets and walked back. Being the nicer guy I even let him go first. He sets up and I watch thru the spotting scope put up about what I expected, a group between 2 and 2 1/2" ... green tip ammo for ya. He starts about he's done better but a little .22 ain't gonna beat that. Damn if a couple range friends don't get in on it and they bet with him. So my kid sets up and I watch the first 3 rounds well under 1", the 4th in the middle of those and the 5th flys a little to open the group up but well under and 1 1/2". He doesn't realize this yet but the range goes cold and we walk down ... the look on his face is priceless ... well actually it was $20 for me and another $50 or $60 for the side bets he made.

When he is paying he humbly asks what kind of rifle, scope, etc so he can go buy one ... gotta love those little CZ rimfires!
 
I love baiting those guys. My story doesn't involve a 22 but it does embarass a range ninja. My brother is one of those people who can pick up a gun he's never shot before without any sights and out shoot anybody, in short a natural. We're at our local range and a range ninja with his tactifool AR starts in on my telling my how his AR is the superior platform to the AK (what I was playing with after shooting the holy black). I just looked at him and said, tell you what, see that dueling tree at 100, let's have at it and see who's what. And I'll even let this guy over here (my brother) shoot my AK. First off, the AK was shooting domestic production Remington which it likes and can group 2moa all day. Second, ninja didn't know who he was shooting against. Well, twenty shots and 10 swings for AR fanboi, brother fires twenty and gets twenty, he then takes my spare mag and off hand wears out the 200yd gong. Gotta love putting it to those guys.

What makes yours even funnier is a kid out shot him, and with a "lowly" 22!:D
 
We were at another range years ago and the AR crowd was at it. This place allowed shooting at cans and stuff (long since closed and now a housing development). Target was a standard ammo can which they were perforating fairly well. One of them was spotting and they weren't paying any attention to the guys with the front stuffers. While they were plinking away, my brother drew down on the can and nailed it sending it flying waaaay up the backstop and tearing a huge hole in it. The guy looking through the spotting scope screams "Jes_s Chr_st!! What the H___ was that?!? They all looked over at us with that priceless slackjaw look and my brother holds up a replica 1863 Springfield musket and says, "Assault rifle, model 1863, any questions?"
 
great stories... while I like to shoot better than the next guy, I also enjoy giving a pat on the back when I see someones face light up when they just shot their best target ever.
 
Ive seen few funny things involving egos.
Why are the most confident young men also the worst at stuff?
Reminds me of s story.

Not a gun story, but one night in my 20's I was in a bad spot and stuck in Reno Nevada. I was far from home, dead broke, and hurting in the worst way. I had just spent my last 5$ on a beer to drown my sorrows. Long ugly story on how I found myself there.

There were two guys playing pool and being loud with bored people watching. I was amazed that the guy winning was playing with a Richard Black cue. Doesn't mean anything to most people but it is an expensive cue worth thousands of dollars. The thing that struck me was that he couldn't play all that well.

Suddenly he starts waving around money and yelling out "who wants to get their a$$ kicked"?

It was like a gift from God! So I stood up and said "well I am a small fry but I'll play you for 20$" (I was afraid to go bigger because I thought hed want to see the money). Dude ridicules me a bit and I say fine and go sit back down. He comes over and says "okay beer money is better than nothing"!

So I play him close and when I win he's mad and says "double or nothing!" For those that don't know, it's a tactic people use thinking sooner or later they'll win one game and get all the money back. They just keep saying double or nothing. Sooner or later even a hack is going to get lucky right? Problem is it multiplies incredibly fast.

Seven games later he is down 640$ and I got heat under my collar and recognize this as a possible windfall! So he again says "double or nothing" and I say "nope. I'll play you for a hundred a game, and you can win your money back with a little work". Should have seen his face. He was NOT PLEASED. Unfortunately by this time I was warmed up and it was a small table and I was basically running out every time I got a look at ball. Everyone in the place was watching because he was loud and they all were enjoying the show.

Four games later and I busted him at over a grand. He's desperate now and says "one more game and I'll put this cue up against the cash....if you let me break".
I almost walked out with the cash because I had a real bad feeling about it, but said ok.

He breaks and makes the 8-ball on the break!! What are the chances!??!! The blood in my neck started pounding. Sweat started pouring and I realized I just made a huge mistake and lost all the money I had just worked for.

Until the cue ball rolled into the top left corner!!!

He tried to weasel out but there were too many people watching and they were all gamblers, so he wasn't leaving without paying. You can get killed in Reno for that kind of thing.

All said and done I walked out with a good beer buzz, a grand cash, and a cue worth north of two grand. It was the biggest score I had ever made at that point in my life, and I played pool for money most nights and was the house pro at a pool hall near Sacramento at the time.

From famine to feast, from downtrodden to high on life in an hour and a half. Heh.

Now, I wasn't a pro tour level player by any means, but at that point in my playing pool was my life and it was quite common for me to "put down a six pack" which is running six consecutive racks of nine ball. My high run in straight pool was 76. I always felt a little bad for that guy because he had no idea what he was getting into and how motivated I was!
 
Nice. A neighbor came over one day while Lauren was shooting her bow at 40 yards. He started talking about shooting and made a comment about being able to shoot from there with a pistol. I told him my money was on Lauren and her bow. I told her to go ahead and shoot. When she was done with 5 arrows he looked at me and said, "Yeah, my money's on her now too." She's out shot a handful of men on sporting clays too. But those guys were good about it, just the way things worked out that day.
 
Back in the early 90's, I took a lady friend of mine out to teach her how to shoot. After a short while, she was plinking shotgun shells off a log at a fair distance with my .22 rifle.

Enter Range Rambo at the bench next to us...six-shot revolver magnum revolver of some kind and absolutely no range manners. His tactic was to load up, fire at his target as fast as he could pull the trigger, and repeat. With predictably abysmal target results.

And every time he pulled the trigger, my lady friend was jumping. I told her to just relax, do her best to ignore the guy, and concentrate on her sight picture and I'd take care of the guy.

I watched the guy and noticed his pattern...load up, put hearing protection on, shoot as fast as he could, take hearing protection off (the rest of us on the range were shooting .22's), and repeat.

I smiled. Widely. And waited.

Next time he emptied his gun and pulled his hearing protection off, I reached down in the cooler, pulled out a full can of soda, lobbed it about 50 feet out, then pulled my AMT Automag II (.22 WMR) out of my holster and split it wide open with the first shot...then pegged it with the next 8 rounds.

Range Rambo scrambled to put his hearing protection on..."J*SUS CHR*ST! WHAT IS THAT THING, A 30 CALIBER?" (AMT made an Automag III, .30 caliber carbine. I give him credit for at least recognizing the type of pistol I had, if not the model.)

"Nope. .22 Magnum. By the way, you might want to keep your hearing protection on while the range is hot."

He packed up and left shortly afterwards.

My lady friend and I laughed that one up over dinner later!
 
Best one I've seen personally was at a trap field in Rocky Mount. My wife shot a straight and beat the four men on the squad, including me. One of them started muttering and stomped off, threw his gun in the car, and drove off in a cloud of dust. One of the other men on the squad started laughing and told us that guy was the club's perennial and reigning trap champion and was pissed that a woman outshot him.
 
Had some fun with a couple range/mall ninjas a few years back. I was visiting one of my sons while he was stationed at McDill AFB. He had just bought a 444 Marlin and my other son had just bought a 1895 45/70 Marlin (old school). In the cases were a couple M1A, AKs, CEMTE, AR15s (the usual suspects) but all the ninjas had seen were the fud guns. Well, both ninjas had ARs on max tactifool complete with laser. He thought he was doing good with a 12in (mostly) group at 50yds, but to be honest there were maybe 10 shots in that 12in, the rest were all over the paper. Now this is an indoor range 100yds, yes, there is one in the greater Tampa area. So my son loads the 444, runs his target out to 100yds while the ninjas are reloading. He waits till ninja 1 is taking aim and then he breaks his shot. The Marlin thundered, dust blew off the rafters, cause a 444 in an indoor range has quite the concussion. Ninja 1 broke into a string expletives about the noise as son breaks second shot. Ninjas shut up and hold muffs tight to ears while son breaks shots 4 and 5. He brought his target up for a look and it's a 2in group with irons at 100yds offhand. Other son breaks out an AK and ninjas start in with the usual crap about ARvAK blahblahblah. Son runs his target out the the same distance (50) the ninjas were shooting at and could barely stay on paper. He shoulders the AK and offhand starts cranking the trigger and pretty much destroys the head area of a B27 shilouette, all thirty rounds pretty much center head shots. Best part, youngest son says to ninja, you got a lot of cool stuff on that AR but I think your money would be better spent on shooting lessons.
 
Best one I ever did was with my step daughter when she was about 17 or 18 she was shooting my 10-22 at about 50 yrds with some sight in target that we had in the bag, Some moron was there watching her shoot and has obviously been checking her and the target out. He mentioned that she hadn't landed anything in the bullseye.
She didn't miss a beat and told him "Because I'm not aiming for it". and kept on plinking. He went about blasting away with some rife in a caliber that was about 10 up from his capabilities.
She finally decides she's about done and puts 10rds that could be covered by a quarter in the bullseye.

I went down and got the target, she had put a round in basically all the little squares of the target plus the 10 in the bullseye.

His face was priceless.

I framed that target and it hangs in her house to this day.
 
I don't have many range ninja stories, usually because I avoid the sorts of people who come to the range with a big ego and a chip on their shoulder. It probably helps that I don't shoot at public ranges either.

I have, on a few occasions, enjoyed taking my iron sighted Marlin 783 .22 magnum to the 200 yard range at DPRC. its just a basic rifle, with a leather 1903 sling on it. Every now and then I'll see some more tactical minded guy there with a scoped .223 or 308 trying to bang the 200 yard steel, and missing more often than hitting. Those times I'll just have a seat on a stool, pull out my .22 mag, sling up, and unload the full magazine on the plate. The look on their faces is priceless.

There's a local fellow I know who's absolutely convinced that his .25acp is the greatest self defense handgun ever made, and he gets so angry when you bring up the ballistics or energy of the .25. He's sorta the opposite sort of ninja.
 
Last week I was at the range happily enjoying just making noise and throwing lead down range. Wasn't really worried about precision marksmanship; I'd had a long couple days and just wanted a bit of stress relief. So, I loaded up a couple 30 round mags for the AR and stared thumping away happily enjoying the cathartic rhythm of the recoil and imaging a few unruly clients being down range. I was minding my own business until some dude with a wood stocked .22 started crowing about how he could out shoot me.

I gave him $20 to shut up and leave me alone.
 
Tim said:
Last week I was at the range happily enjoying just making noise and throwing lead down range. Wasn't really worried about precision marksmanship; I'd had a long couple days and just wanted a bit of stress relief. So, I loaded up a couple 30 round mags for the AR and stared thumping away happily enjoying the cathartic rhythm of the recoil and imaging a few unruly clients being down range. I was minding my own business until some dude with a wood stocked .22 started crowing about how he could out shoot me.

I gave him $20 to shut up and leave me alone.
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Lol!!
 
B00ger said:
Stay humble my friends. There is always someone smarter, faster, and better.

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Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance. -David Mamet
 
One time, before my wife and I were married, we were up in the mountains with her folks at her grandparents' house. We had decided to bring some guns up and do some shooting. Now my wife's dad and brother both hunted and were around guns, but never taught my wife how to shoot. So I had taken her several times to the range, starting with my single shot Marlin, and taught her to shoot. She particularly enjoyed shooting my Ruger SR9. So here we are, up in the mountains, with targets set up and blasting away. Mostly .22s and shotguns up until I decided we should switch over to shoot pistols. I set a coke bottle up at about 7 yards away and my now father-in-law volunteered to shoot it first. I put five rounds in the mag, and he couldn't find the coke bottle. So then my now wife wanted a turn to shoot it. Five rounds in the magazine, and the first shot was dead center, blowing the coke bottle off the stand. She ended up putting all five of the rounds in the coke bottle. I just laughed quietly to myself.
 
When I was kid, my dad seen a groundhog in the neighbors field, maybe 100 yards out. My dad had me fetch a 30-30. He whistles and then fired.

I said, so where did you hit it. He said right between the eyes. I said no way. Went up and retrieved the critter. He hollowed out its head right through the eyes.

Never bet against my dad again on shooting something. He was telling me about qualifying in the Marines how he purposely shot lower scores.
 
NCFubar said:
well actually it was $20 for me and another $50 or $60 for the side bets he made.
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So did you give the boy any of the loot or did you keep it all you big bully. :D

Shooting against kids with 22's and fresh eyes? How dumb do you gotta be. They basically have cat vision at that age.
And girls are the worst. They just do it...they don't have any of that pesky testosterone getting in the way.

I have my own range out here in BFE, and we always have contests and games. But it's between good friends and family...and that makes it fun and we all get a big kick out of it, along with good natured ribbing afterward at the barn during the spring-tonic cool-down.
 
You might get a kick out this one. Number 2 son had decided to enter the USAF through USAF ROTC in college. He had to qualify with an M9 as part of his schoolin so he wanted some trigger time with the 1911 to get ready. I put the target out at 15 as he loaded up. I tried to give him some instruction but somehow youth brings on a degree of deafness. His groups were all over the paper and he complained about how crappy the loose 1911 was. I just loaded a mag and shot mostly Xs, 10s and a 9. Handed the gun back over and just said, nope it's you. He started listening and by the end of the session he was outshooting me with my gun.

Fast forward, this kid has 20/10 vision and has fallen in love with HK USP in 40SW to the point he has 3 at last count and he's proficient to the point of making the Terminator look like a drunk left handed klutz on a right hand unicycle. I've seen him on more than one occasion put an entire mag at 15yds into a silver dollar. If there's money on the table, just give it to him and save your ammo. When he's had to go to Red Flag, on a couple occasions he made his casino cash from fellow pilots who thought they could shoot. A major connected with the USAF shooting team tried to get him to join, but typical, he says he just shoots for fun and relaxing and making it a job would be just that, a job. I guess all those afternoons spent with the boys, grandpa, some sammiches and a couple bricks of 22lr were a bit productive.
 
B00ger said:
Stay humble my friends. There is always someone smarter, faster, and better.


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And using an inferior gun!
 
Dave951 said:
I guess all those afternoons spent with the boys, grandpa, some sammiches and a couple bricks of 22lr were a bit productive.
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Quality time spent with family and especially kids is always productive and creates great memories.
 
Lawless said:
My FIL has one.
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My first pistol was the AMT Automag II, still have it today. Bought it not long after it first came out. Probably around 1990 or so. Still a favorite shooter amongst my handguns.

I liked the Automag II so much, I wanted to buy an Automag III as soon as I saw it come out. Unfortunately, even though I love the look of the gun, it just never fit right in my hand.

Sad...that was a killer for me, otherwise I'd have one to brag about, too.

How does your FIL's shoot? My Automag II is smooth and accurate as I could ever ask for. I used to shoot soda cans a 100 yards with it.
 
I have not shot it in years but I remember it being a flame thrower.
 
Best way I've found to avoid the "tactical Timmys" and other annoying types is to go when they're most likely at work. One of the benefits of being self employed. If on the off chance one or more of them show up in their plate carriers and molle getups, I'll whack some steel with a 58 Enfield. Seems black powder smoke acts as a repellent to that type.
 
I keep my mouth shut about what's better at the range. I know next to nothing. I have only shot what we own, aside from an M16 once in the USAF back in 81.
If anyone asks me a question I can only answer based on my own experience.

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Dave951 said:
Best way I've found to avoid the "tactical Timmys" and other annoying types is to go when they're most likely at work. One of the benefits of being self employed. If on the off chance one or more of them show up in their plate carriers and molle getups, I'll whack some steel with a 58 Enfield. Seems black powder smoke acts as a repellent to that type.
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This^^. I like to go out to DPRC on a workday when there is a little rain in the forecast and can pretty much have the place to myself.
 
I taught in a private high school in Alabama for several years. The parents of quite a few of the students had farms, and I was often invited by the parents or students to go hunting with them on their land. I gained a great deal of respect that served me well in my teaching and coaching one day when I was riding around on one of the farms with several of my senior students scouting for doves. We were driving through a cotton field when a feral cat got into the path in front of us about 75 yards away. The driver of the Jeep was the son of the property owner and my left tackle. He expressed a displeasure with the numerous feral cats on his property and said he wished someone would shoot as many as possible. I told him to stop, hopped out of the Jeep, pulled out my concealed S&W snubnose 38, and rolled the cat with one shot. The look on the faces of the students was priceless, and my reputation was elevated to gratifying and useful levels by that one lucky shot. I did not tell them that I was as surprised as they were that I hit it.



I should add that shooting feral cats on private property was quite legal at that time and greatly encouraged.
 
They don't call the CZ rimfire bolt guns the "poor man's Anschutz" for nothing.

I've surprised a lot of people with my little CZ rifles. But as a rule, I don't bet them that my rifle shoots better than there's. I just let them shoot mine and they quickly become converts.

Better to make a convert than win a bet I reckon. Then again, creating a convert probably costs them more money in the long run.
 
B00ger said:
Stay humble my friends. There is always someone smarter, faster, and better.


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Exactly!
I need to start getting to a range so I can witness all these stories unfold! I like taking bets on whos the better shot with my friends... We all know the level each other is at, so its just fun.. I consider myself a decent shot. Nowhere, not even close to being GREAT... but I just cant imagine myself ever talking crap to 1) a stranger at the range, about whos a better shot or whos gun is better
2) taking a bet on it when I have no idea what the guy can do!

Im glad some people do though, makes for great stories!
 
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